


Another Tuesday

by CitrusVanille



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Electricity, Fluff, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-13
Updated: 2015-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-12 23:15:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13557645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CitrusVanille/pseuds/CitrusVanille
Summary: Tuesday afternoon Steve gets hit with some kind of ray and goes down. It doesn’t even hurt, not really, but it’s a direct hit to the gut and knocks the wind out of him.





	Another Tuesday

**Author's Note:**

  * For [amoergosum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amoergosum/gifts).



Tuesday afternoon Steve gets hit with some kind of ray and goes down. It doesn’t even hurt, not really, but it’s a direct hit to the gut and knocks the wind out of him.

A string of curses comes over the comms at the same time he hears the whine of repulsors, and he pushes himself back to his feet just in time to see the over-excited kid with the ray gun get blasted backwards into a wall.

“Easy, Iron Man, he’s just a kid,” Steve says, almost automatically.

Tony snorts, but doesn’t say anything. Steve takes it as a minor personal victory, knows to take them where he can.

The SHIELD crew that had been maintaining the perimeter sweeps in to handle the cleanup – something Steve has always appreciated – and the team heads back to the Tower to inhale the food JARVIS already has waiting, and pass out, scattered between the couches in the living room and their respective beds as the adrenaline rush wears off.

Steve wakes up around dinnertime with an odd fizzy taste in the back of his mouth. He chalks it up to the Chinese/American BBQ fusion take-out, and rolls out of bed. Or tries to. The blankets tangle around his legs and he hits the floor with a muffled  _thump_.

“Do you require assistance, Captain?” JARVIS inquires, tone so blandly polite Steve is pretty sure he’s being mocked.

“No,” Steve sits up on the carpet. “No, I’m good.” He struggles for a minute with the blankets, and, strangely, it is a struggle. They seem determined to cling. Steve finally gets free, and tosses the offending pile back onto his bed. “Right,” he says. He crosses the room rather more quickly than normal, feet scuffing across the floor. He gets a shock from the doorknob for his pains, and is still shaking his hand out when he gets to the kitchen.

Tony blinks at him over his cup of coffee. “Troubles in paradise, Cap?” he asks, just the hint of a smirk making the corners of his mouth twitch.

Steve rolls his eyes, ignores the innuendo – best not to let Tony get started – and makes a beeline for the fridge. “The door shocked me,” he says, starts pulling out the makings of a sandwich. “You want?” he asks.

“That’s not right.”

“I can make something else if you –”

“No, not the sandwich,” Tony cuts him off. “The sandwich is fine. The door shouldn’t have shocked you.”

The fridge light flickers, and Steve blinks, then shrugs and shuts the door. “I was wearing socks on the carpet,” he tells Tony, “and had just gotten a bit tangled up in my blankets. It happens.”

“No,” Tony sounds oddly certain. “It doesn’t. Not here.”

Steve rolls his eyes again, but since his back is to Tony, it’s not terribly effective. “Even you can’t control static electricity, Tony,” he says.

Tony huffs. “All the metal inherent to the building is coated – Hank and I were trying to find something to deter Magneto, and while that failed rather spectacularly, we did come up with something that successfully prevents the transference of electricity. I felt it would be advantageous for a building that frequently houses a thunder god. Rebuilding is inconvenient and exhausting. And expensive,” Tony adds as an afterthought. “Money better used for rebuilding things other people destroy, anyway. And Pepper gets mean when I make her redecorate the same rooms every other week.”

Steve, who turned to stare sometime in the middle of Tony’s ramble, just blinks at him.

“Don’t look now,” Tony continues, “but I think you have a fan.”

Steve swivels back towards the counter, and puts out a hand to catch the jar of mustard as it skids towards him. “What.” He looks back at Tony, who has gone back to his coffee. “Tony.”

“What?” Tony looks up again.

“You saw that,” it’s not a question, he knows Tony saw it, but he still feels a little like he needs confirmation.

“Yes?” Tony raises an eyebrow at him.

Steve waits, but nothing more is forthcoming. “It doesn’t strike you as odd?”

Tony shrugs. “Weirder things have happened. As long as it’s you causing the static and not my tower, I’m not too worried.” He finishes off his coffee and gets up to get another cup.

Steve doesn’t quite know what to say to that, but it’s somewhat comforting that Tony’s so blasé about the whole thing. Until Tony turns back to him, already drinking from his newly filled cup, and almost chokes.

“Or a little worried,” he amends. “I think it’s getting worse.”

Steve turns around, and everything he’d pulled from the fridge, with the exception of the mustard still in his hand, is bobbing in midair around his shoulders. “I hate Tuesdays,” he says to the room at large, and covers his face with his free hand as Tony starts to laugh.

+

Tony rousts Bruce from somewhere – Steve hopes Tony didn’t wake him, but wouldn’t put money on it – and they disappear together into Bruce’s lab along with several vials of Steve’s blood. Steve thinks sometimes, when he’s feeling less than generous, that other people have more of his blood than he does. He’s stopped letting most people poke him with needles, but he figures if ever there was a time when his blood really did need testing, it’s now. He pointedly ignores the way little sparks flare along the needle and both inside and outside the glass.

Steve goes back to his room and tries to read. The pages of his book stick to his fingers when he turns the pages. It’s distracting. Eventually, he gives up, and wanders down to Bruce’s lab, to see if any progress has been made. He figures, if nothing else, he can read there instead of sitting around on his own, trying not to twitch.

The lab is dark.

“Jarvis?” Steve asks, retreating back into the elevator.

“Sir and Dr. Banner are in Sir’s workshop,” Jarvis replies, and the elevator descends without any further prompting.

“Thank you, Jarvis,” Steve says when the doors slide open again. He can see Tony and Bruce in among the holograms, blue lights reflecting off of Bruce’s glasses and shining around their hands as they create and discard tangible ideas.

Bruce looks up at the sound of the doors, and gives Steve a distracted smile. “Hey, Steve,” he raises his hand in a half-wave. “No luck, yet. But this is pretty fascinating.”

Steve squints at the images dancing around the room, but can’t quite figure out what they are. It’s possible that looking at them from the wrong side isn’t helping, but more likely that that doesn’t make a difference, since they’re three-dimensional. “I’ll just,” he gestures with his book towards one of the tables.

There’s no response from either Bruce or Tony. Steve’s not entirely sure Tony has even noticed he’s there. He settles in at the table, straightening the scattered books and science journals into stacks to clear some space for himself, and tries to read again.

He’s more successful this time. The hum of the computers and the mumbling exchanges of his teammates makes for good background noise without being disruptive. Even the way the pages twitch under his hands doesn’t bother him as much as it did in his room, and he can sink into the narrative.

“It’s stopped intensifying,” Tony says, some indeterminate amount of time later, and Steve’s head comes up automatically, startled out of his reading.

“What?” he swivels around, spinning his chair away from the worktable.

“The electricity in your blood,” Tony explains, “which is as close a definition to what is lurking in your bloodstream as we can find, has stopped intensifying. It’s not, well, expanding, growing, becoming _more_.”

“Becoming more,” Steve repeats.

“Technical term,” Tony waves it off.

Bruce’s mouth twitches like he’s trying not to laugh. “We think the effects are wearing off,” he says. “Or will soon. The rate of increase was fairly rapid at first, then began to taper off very gradually, and it’s only just plateaued. If it decreases at the same –” he cuts himself off, mouth twitching again. “Sorry.”

Steve shakes his head. “It’s fine. I get the point. Is there a time frame? This is… less than convenient.”

“Another few hours, at least, maybe a day.” Tony scrolls through a wall of semi-transparent blue text. “It’s taken about ten hours to get to this point, and it’s moving more slowly now than it was. If the changes keep slowing down as it fades out, at this rate, you might be sparking until tomorrow night.”

“Sparking?”

“Throwing off static electricity,” Bruce clarifies. His gaze shifts so he’s looking just past Steve, and the corner of his mouth quirks up. “I thought it would have settled at least somewhat already. Clearly not. Most likely the electricity is reacting more slowly in you than it does in the test tube, since the blood in your veins isn’t stationary, which would keep the electricity moving as well, to a certain degree.”

“Maybe it’s just your natural magnetism,” Tony suggests. “I mean, you’re very –” he waves a hand at Steve, rather vaguely, Steve thinks, though Bruce is nodding agreement “– obviously. Not surprising, really, that even a pile of books would sit up and beg if you gave them even the suggestion of interest. The suggestion of interest in this case being that you’ve touched them, of course.”

“Of course,” Steve echoes. “Tony.”

“Steve.”

“What the hell?”

Bruce makes a choking noise that is clearly an attempt to hide laughter. Steve ignores him.

Tony points.

Steve turns in his chair again, and realizes what Bruce has been looking at. All the books Steve had moved are bobbing in midair, looking like nothing so much as a pile of overeager puppies, shuffling and bumping into each other trying to get closer to him. Steve sinks his head into both hands. “I really, really hate Tuesdays,” he tells his palms.

“It’s Wednesday, now,” Tony points out helpfully, and Bruce laughs outright.


End file.
